Schwartz (1998) described a new method-the Implicit Association Test (IAT)-for unobtrusively measuring racial attitudes. This article assesses the validity of the IAT by investigating whether Greenwald et al.'s implicit racism findings resulted from two confounds present in their studies: differential familiarity and frequency of the words that comprised their target concepts. Experiment 1 produced large IAT effects when both low and high familiarity words comprised nonsocial target categories (insects and flowers) and demonstrated that the IAT is more sensitive when high familiarity exemplars form the target concepts. In Experiment 2, we obtained large implicit racism effects for both African American and Hispanic racial groups even when the familiarity and frequency of the names that comprised the racial categories were controlled and even though participants described themselves as unprejudiced. Additionally, explicit self-reports of racial attitudes were only weakly related to the IAT measures. These experiments indicate that (a) although familiarity clearly exerts an important influence on the IAT, the use of low familiarity stimuli does not eliminate the sensitivity of the IAT, (b) stimulus familiarity and frequency can not account for the implicit racism effect and (c) stimulus familiarity is an important moderating variable that can influence the sensitivity of
The authors investigated the effects of experimentally induced mood states on the identification of contradictions in text passages and ratings of comprehension in 3 experiments. Mood impaired comprehension in college students across a variety of passages, as evidenced by a depressive impairment in contradiction identification and an increased number of false identifications among depressed participants. Additionally, depressed individuals were less accurate in their judgments of passage difficulty. These findings are consistent with the resource allocation model of mood effects, which attributes impaired comprehension to the activation of intrusive, irrelevant thoughts during reading of the passage. It is further argued that these results cannot be explained simply by a deficit in motivation of the depressed participants.
Recently, Forgays, Forgays, and Spielberger (in press) reported the first exploratory factor analysis of the total 44-item State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) by gender. The analyses were based on a sample of over 700 male and female university students and identified quite well six of the original STAXI scales and subscales. In addition, a seventh factor, "Feel-Like-Expressing-Anger," emerged for women. In the present study, we examined the STAXI responses from a middle-aged adult population. Exploratory factor analyses replicated the majority of the original structure of the STAXI measure including a Feel-Like-Expressing-Anger factor for men and women. In addition, we employed confirmatory factor analyses and cross-validation procedures to test the validity of Spielberger's (1988) AHA! model. Based on these procedures, we found (a) that a seven-factor model provided a better fit than a six-factor solution for each gender and (b) evidence of robust gender differences for two factors: Feel-Like-Expressing-Anger and State Anger. These gender differences are consistent with the social costs for anger expression in women and the social benefits for men.
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